Note: This interview was conducted when Dave Williams was the CEO of NomadX. For updates on his current role at NomadX and the company's development, see this blog post: Flatio's Acquisition of NomadX Accommodation Inventory: Areview
Dave Williams is a pioneer in the digital marketing, advertising, and ad tech industries as a serial digital entrepreneur over the past 20+ years. He has also experienced multiple exits in the early formative stages of the search engine marketing, social media, and ad-tech industries, with previous company headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, and New York City. After visiting over 50 countries in their global travels, Dave, his wife, and their dog, Manu, now reside in Lisbon, Portugal, at the Northern Algarve, where they learn to surf and use it as a base their European travels.
Dave is the CEO and Co-founder of NomadX, a European midterm housing marketplace.
In today's post of our Interview Series, Dave will talk about the Nomad movement, his journey as NomadX CEO, his recent visit to the first Nomad Village on Madeira Island, and how he sees the future of remote work in the post-pandemic world.
Flatio: Can you please tell us a bit about you and NomadX?
Dave: NomadX started with the desire to help others quickly and affordably experienced the slow-travel Digital Nomad lifestyle, whether for a month or a lifetime in unique locations throughout the world, with our start in Portugal. Before founding NomadX in 2017, my wife, Jen Williams, and I, the company’s co-founders, spent years traveling the world where we saw an opportunity to improve upon the ease of finding affordable, midterm housing and immediate connection to the local community for slow traveling freelancers, location independent entrepreneurs, and remote employees.
We also wanted to help global workers experience a new way to travel, live, and work worldwide. This was when NomadX was born. In October 2020, NomadX merged accommodation listings and operational assets with Flatio, a mid-term rental platform aimed at professionals and students based in Czechia. The merger consisted of both companies combining their listings (Flatio had 9,000 across 60 cities and 17 countries, and NomadX had 1,700 in Portugal alone) and expansion plans within existing markets and to new markets across Europe.
After beginning discussions in July, Flatio and NomadX were quick to push through the deal due to evolving customer behavior caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to increase our geographic reach and leverage their robust technology platform for scale. The timing couldn’t be more perfect. There’s a rapid increase in remote working, led by technology businesses like Twitter, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook, leading to a vast market opportunity.
At NomadX, we are a value-driven company. This is why it’s NomadX’s mission, as a Public Benefit Corporation, to promote friendliness, cultural understanding, and social interaction between Digital Nomads and the local communities in which they live and work. NomadX was created for location-independent professionals by a remote team of digital nomads, with its global headquarters in Lisboa, Portugal.
Flatio: What are the main challenges you face or have faced in the past when traveling and working remotely?
Dave: The main challenges for me are to make sure I have good wifi and in a time zone location where I can easily manage a fully remote team. Finally, I need to have periodic face-to-face in-person meetings several times per year for business planning and a feeling of genuine connection to my team members. This helps to inspire and re-energize me.
Flatio: You have been supporting and advocating for the Nomad movement for a while now, so how do you see the Digital nomad movement in the post-pandemic world? Has COVID-19 accelerated it?
Dave: We expect it to grow to 10x over the next several years and become a much more mainstream lifestyle and global movement versus it being an early adopter market like we’ve seen in the past 5-10 years. We expect to see top destinations found on NomadList.com to become even more popular and new locations such as Madeira Island, Ericeira in Portugal for surf, and mountain destinations such as Bansko Bulgaria pick up in interest as remote workers flee their local cities to start living more remotely. We think travel will start happening again this summer but not take off again until 2022.
Flatio: Do you think Nomadic work is the future of remote work?
Dave: Yes, we see this as the future for knowledge-based workers with the flexibility to work from anywhere. Society is starting to understand the travel opportunities and hiring options made available through flexible work arrangements. Although not all workers will be nomadic, we expect many remote work professionals to start experimenting with the lifestyle. Some do this more permanently, and others ultimately decide to travel to lower-cost locations that better suit their lifestyles. We don’t see this movement slowing down anytime soon.
Flatio: You have recently visited the Nomad Village initiative in the Madeira Islands with your wife. Can you tell us about your experience there?
Dave: We had the opportunity to visit Madeira Island at the start of March and are happy to see the progress of the 1st Nomad Village in Ponta do Sol as the first of its kind. It’s great to see so many nomads who’ve expressed interest with over 5,000 registrations in just one month and with close to 500 digital nomads on the Island already. Great local communities are forming, local hosts have great experiences hosting the nomads (I’ve only heard of a couple of issues so far), and a fantastic nomad hiking community being formed with over 250 WhatsApp channel members. Also, we hear of excellent stories where because of the Digital Nomads Madeira initiative, local accommodation jobs are being saved, and locals see long-term potential with projects.
Flatio: How do you think initiatives like that can help the nomadic movement?
Dave: It helps to have locations that don’t just offer digital nomad visas but activate the community at a local level to bring together digital nomads with the local community to create the ultimate digital nomad experience localized impact.
Flatio: Flatio & NomadX are strategic partners of the initiative. Can you tell us how you see this cooperation and how do you think it can benefit locals?
Dave: Madeira Island is best known as a destination for retirees and short-term travel, so we are helping to open the island to a new form of slow travel by futuristic digital nomad travelers. We think we can increase economic activity for the locals and a great local community evolving for the digital nomads. We also want to offer local impact by drawing more high-tech and entrepreneurial talent to the island to ultimately stimulate cooperation, skill shares, and job creation in new and attractive digital industries. Before COVID-19, Madeira Island received 1,5 million visitors per year, and the short-term rentals were the primary source of income for many locals.
Flatio: Do you think that the nomadic work growth will impact how landlords are renting their properties? Do you think the shift towards mid-term rentals is here to stay?
Dave: We are seeing a shift in the local's understanding of digital nomads (no, we aren’t stinky backpackers) and how best to accommodate travelers who stay for months instead of for days or weeks. The biggest issue we see is that there’s a massive demand for private bedrooms. Locals are starting to understand that renting bedrooms versus just complete Villas is something in demand by digital nomads that they hadn’t expected. Also, the government in Madeira has been very supportive of the project. It plans to create many more nomad villages on the Island, with the next in Calheta next to Ponta do Sol due to the early successes. While we expect tourism to return to the Island this summer, we hear from many hosts that they want to complement short-term inventory by offering mid-term accommodation rentals, so we think this type of travel is here to stay.
Flatio: How will NomadX & Flatio support both the nomads and remote workers looking for midterm rentals and local landlords shifting from short-term rentals to offer their accommodation for more extended stays?
Dave: We support our NomadX travel community by offering an accommodation platform for hosts that's easy to use with lots of accommodation options, 100% free for hosts with no transaction costs, requires no deposits for guests, offers standardized accommodation contracts to minimize disputes. It’s our goal to provide a platform to meet the needs of this new travel market segment that’s convenient, nonbureaucratic, and easy to use. For us, it’s all about having a great guest and host experience, create lasting friendships, and supporting the local landlords and community.
Flatio’s actively adding more inventory on Madeira. So, if you’re a landlord in Madeira Island and wish to join Flatio to offer your properties for free during 2021, get started now by clicking here.
If you are a nomad interested in renting accommodation on Madeira, we offer a discount for all the nomads during 2021; go to Flatio.com, choose your favorite property, and use the code DIGITALNOMADSMADEIRA at checkout to enjoy a 25% discount on our service fee.
We’d love to have your opinion on this and to hear from you regarding how the change in demand has affected you. Please share your story with us here.
